Part 20 (1/2)
”Quite right. This is experimental.”
”Always happy to be at the cutting edge. When do they do that?”
”Cut? Not at all, I gather.”
”I wonder. After I'm dead, wouldn't they recover more if they could use invasive surgery?”
”a la the dictators?”
”I'm willing to give this the best effort.”
”Heroic, but I think unnecessary.”
”I just want the best copy, is all.” To her mind, this wasn't remotely valorous. In her pantheon, science had few heroes. Most good science came from bright minds at play, like Benjamin and Kingsley. Able to turn an elegant insight, to find beguiling tricks in arcane matters-pretty, amusing, a frolic. Play, even intellectual play, was fun, good in its own right.
”You are going to fly into the mouth of the monster. Cla.s.sic Beowulf-style hero, by my measure.”
He was being charming, hardly able to keep his feelings from flooding out, but she disagreed profoundly. Her heroes stuck it out against hard opposition, drove toward daunting goals, accepting pain and failure and keeping on, anyway. All the way through astronaut training, those had been her ideals. This making a Xerox of herself was a last gesture, not bravery. Maybe just foolishness.
”No, I I won't. My copy will.” He sat gazing down at his hands and she wondered how to get him out of his funk. Be bright, cheery. Men were so grateful for that. ”Continuity, that's really it, right?” won't. My copy will.” He sat gazing down at his hands and she wondered how to get him out of his funk. Be bright, cheery. Men were so grateful for that. ”Continuity, that's really it, right?”
”How so?” Head up, plainly happier to be off on abstractions.
”That's the essence of it, of the ident.i.ty problem. We do it all the time, really. When we sleep, the unconscious remains active, so we get continuity at a broad level.”
”Ah. Your point is that no one wakes up and thinks they are a new person.”
”Yeah, only lately, I feel a thousand years old.”
”Patients brain-cooled until their brain waves lapse can later revive with their sense of self intact.” His brow furrowed, then relaxed. ”I see-how will we know it's truly 'you,' eh?”
”I suppose you could just log on to the computer aboard the Searcher, my s.h.i.+p, and read me out.”
”But I don't know you like that. I know you-love you-this ordinary old, human way.”
”Inside I'm a mess, lemme tell you.”
”You look orderly and understandable from a distance.”
”And only that way. Close up, inside, I'm ugly.”
”All of us live inside, always close up. Other people look methodical and tidy only because they're at long range.”
”That's comforting.”
He pressed her hand into his. ”I'll know you.”
”How?”
”You'll think of something, m'love.” He grinned, but there was no elation behind it. ”I know you.”
8.
A few more days had crept by, and now that they were at the nexus of it all, he felt only a yawning vacancy.
”This must be the strangest thing anyone has ever done,” Benjamin said to her. The specialists' army had withdrawn, leaving them in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, almost comforting in its intimacy. They were surrounded by advanced magnetic reading gear and diagnostics.
She smiled. ”Yeah, and out of love, at that.”
”To...leave me something?”
”That's part of it, for me. But love is a big, cheesy word, able to cover a lot of things.”
Channing was fully uploaded now. The last few hours had been pretty painful for her and she had stood up well, sweat popping out on her brow. He had wiped it away carefully. She had kept waving away even the light painkillers they had offered. ”Don't wanna cloud the picture,” she had kept repeating earlier. As though she were an artist at work on her last oil painting.
The offhand weirdness of the scene kept throwing him. They had come to him with a proposal about the use of her brain afterward. He had listened and gone through confusion to anger to swirling doubt and then he had made them go away. Their idea was to slice her dead brain layer by layer, so that scanning machines could read the deep detail digitally, getting better resolution to sharpen the simulation.
This had sent a cold horror running through him. They had put it as nicely as they could, but still it meant slowly planing away her brain. In the end, her entire cranium would be excavated, leaving half a skull. He could not bear the picture.
She struggled up out of her fog and managed a wrecked smile. ”You have to die to be resurrected.”
”I'll...” The words stuck in his throat.
”You'll see me again.” She gave him a blissful look. ”Goodbye, lover.”
It was the last thing she said.
After a night of no sleep and a lot of sour drinking with Kingsley, he met with the specialists again. They showed him the long black box housing Channing's uploaded mind. ”Reduced to a featureless...” he began, but could not finish the sentence.
”We'll be processing, compiling, and organizing,” a woman in a smart executive suit said.
”Fine.”
”In a few days-”
”Fine. Just shut up.”